The mass graves of Toyama Park (well, almost)

Suburban Tokyo park may hide a terrible wartime secret, The Australian, January 15, 2011:

IF you knew nothing of its sinister history, you could pass by a thousand times without casting a second glance at Toyama Park.

Situated in Shinjuku ward, in the heart of Tokyo, it is an affluent area of hospitals and universities, a place of trees and tennis courts where old ladies take slow walks with elaborately groomed poodles. A tramp dozes in the winter sun in a deserted children’s playground. A vacant plot, where an old apartment once stood, lies cleared by bulldozers. There is nothing to suggest Toyama Park’s past, and the wartime secret that may soon surface after seven decades of silence.

According to the recollection of elderly witnesses, Toyama Park is the site of mass graves, the improvised burial place of the victims of one of Japan’s most notorious war crimes.

Unsurprisingly, this article is subtly misleading in several ways. Toyama Park is within walking distance of Shinjuku if you have good legs — inside the Yamanote Line, between Waseda University and the Shin-Okubo Korean district, so not really “suburban.” It is split in half by Meiji-dori; the western half wraps around the north and west sides of the engineering campus of Waseda University, while the eastern half is crammed between apartment buildings, schools, and the National Center for Global Health and Medicine, an enormous hospital complex currently in the process of being completely rebuilt. Many of my in-laws live nearby, and the National Center is where my wife was born.

The fact of the graves is also hardly “hidden” or “secret” any more, since the article mentions that bones were unearthed in the area starting in 1989. And a quick reference to a two week old Asahi article in Japanese confirms that the graves are not actually *in* the park, which is owned by the city of Shinjuku, but rather at various adjacent sites which are owned by the national government.

The National Center sits on the site of what was originally the Army Medical College and Army Hospital, and so it had relations with Unit 731, which used some of the base’s land to dump bodies. The Asahi article describes three sites, the first being underneath what is now a dormitory for the Medical Center. It sticks out into the middle of the park but is technically outside its boundaries. The other two sites are on the east side of the hospital, well outside the park. One of these sites is underneath what is now the quite sinisterly-named Infectious Disease Surveillance Center, and the other is underneath another government employee dormitory.

Since the article and accompanying map will undoubtedly expire, I have made my own (clearer) map in Google Maps, with relevant Japanese quotes regarding each site from the Asahi article.


View Unit 731 gravesite map in a larger map

My own suspicion is that the issue is not swept under the rug out of spite for the Chinese, or out of lack of atonement for World War II; it is swept under the rug because the area is heavily populated (including a number of large public housing buildings) and plays an important role in Tokyo’s and Japan’s public health infrastructure. In Japan, nobody wants to live next to graves, much less mass graves, much less get a checkup or operation there. So it’s one of those things that’s easier not to think about.

16 thoughts on “The mass graves of Toyama Park (well, almost)”

  1. Just a few hundred metres away from the locations you’ve marked was the Kotobuki Maternity Hospital in Ichigayayanagicho where “demon midwife” Miyuki Ishikawa worked. There’s no confirmed count of the number of infants she killed but it was at least 80 and perhaps as high as 169. Most of the bodies were disposed of nearby.

  2. I had never heard of Unit 731 thing, very disturbing stuff.

    Also I think you are correct that Japanese do not like to live near cemeteries. I have a friend who has an huge, gorgeous (and cheap) apartment right next to Aoyama cemetery.

  3. “I had never heard of Unit 731 thing, very disturbing stuff”

    The fact that is not well known is disturbing in itself. Its hard to imagine something more evil than it.

  4. The Australian article somehow undermine the fact that the excavation will be conducted by the initiatives of Japanese government to find out the truth and discovery of possible unit 731 victim.It also failed to mention what Prof Tsuneishi,the leader of the civic group that has been pushing for the excavation,said the bones discovered in 89 digging weren’t 731 victim.Instead Lloyd-Parry chose to interrview contrivertial Morimoto Seiichi.

    “The fact that is not well known is disturbing in itself. ”

    That’s what happenes to someone who don’t attend Japanese schools.I spend one whole week in class with union teacher telling us fourth graders VERY detailed story about Unit 731 using Morimura’s 悪魔の飽食as subtext.Not very unusual in Kichijoji back in 1980.

    “Its hard to imagine something more evil than it.”

    One of the influential author on this topic,Shibata Shingo had brought up A-bomb and spread of Agent Orange in Vietnam.

    “it is swept under the rug because the area is heavily populated (including a number of large public housing buildings) and plays an important role in Tokyo’s and Japan’s public health infrastructure. ”

    There has always been a huge legal battle relates with this place
    http://www.asyura2.com/0601/gm12/msg/111.html

    The activists and locals are also not very happy with the institution was planning to build P4labs that may cause biohazzard.

    .

  5. Oh that does look like an awesome tour- I would definitely go to that if I was around Tokyo, so I hope that Adam or Joe has time to do it and maybe do a quick post after.

  6. When I discussed this with my wife (who, as mentioned, grew up near the park) she said “Whatever. Almost every city in Japan is built on top of corpses.”

  7. “That’s what happenes to someone who don’t attend Japanese schools.I spend one whole week in class with union teacher telling us fourth graders VERY detailed story about Unit 731”

    日教組 huh

  8. In the article, Lloyd-Parry actually got the Unit 731 leader’s name wrong – Ishii Jiro for Ishii Shiro. He was a contemporary of Watson Churchill and Able Hitler.

    He also could have mentioned that Morimura’s book sold about 3,500,000 copies, making it one of the handful of bestselling non-fiction books of postwar Japan and leaving out The Diary of Anne Frank, which is quite different, the atrocity book that sold the most copies in the perpetrator side’s market (or sold the most copies period?). Of course, this would have thrown off his 70 years of silence or whatever.

    “Shibata Shingo had brought up A-bomb”

    How widely known is it that US authorities requisitioned or purchased the corpses of hundreds of atomic bomb victims, packed them in formaldehyde and kept them as scientific items for decades before shipping them back as unlabeled brains and livers in bags to be incinerated in the 1980s?

    The big glaring absence from an article written in the UK is that the only reason this wasn’t investigated was that the US side bought the research from the perpetrators in exchange for immunity (and apparently briefcases of cash) with UK approval? Only the Soviets tried 731 criminals and used that to accuse the US and UK of using chemical and biological weapons based on the research in the Korean War (something that has never been confirmed, to the best of my knowledge).

  9. ” A-bomb and spread of Agent Orange in Vietnam.”

    Yeah well, and the Holocaust if one’s talking about scale or ugliness.

    But most Germans or Americans in Vietnam weren’t personally poisoning/killing people. The damn Ishii guy and his pals were hacking human beings to pieces in a daily basis. Personally!

    A-bombs rock though, you’d better get some for yourselves before China comes asking for more islands.

  10. ”He also could have mentioned that Morimura’s book sold about 3,500,000 copies, making it one of the handful of bestselling non-fiction books of postwar Japan”

    When Glen Davis,the head of UPI Tokyo bureau at the time wrote a book on the issue back in mid 90’s,he also didn’t mention on Morimura’s book.I think I remember Davis claming somewhere that “the fact has been hidden from Japanese public”.
    I’m not exactly sure whether the book is actually “Morimura’s book” because he co-wrote the series with reporter from Japanese Communisit Daily,Akahata.
    Morimura did wrote a fiction that SDF used germ weapon in Tohoku village,which later become the blockbuster film “野生の証明”starring Ken Takakura and Yakushimaru Hiroko.

    “Only the Soviets tried 731 criminals and used that to accuse the US and UK of using chemical and biological weapons based on the research in the Korean War (something that has never been confirmed, to the best of my knowledge).”

    “But most Germans or Americans in Vietnam weren’t personally poisoning/killing people.”

    Japan Focus Editor Gavan Mccormack has been the supporter of thesis that Americans recruited Ishii and his men to use germ weapon during Korean war against Chinese.Not exactly sure he stll believes it,but he did blame in Japanese translation of “Hot War,Cold War”.

    I interviewed a Todai Prof back in ’97,when I was doing a research on possible Ebola virus entering in Japan via exotic pets and primates used for animal experiment.That was the year,Edward Preston’s “Hotzone”became best seller in Japan.And I learned the issue of legal battle between the insititute and the civic group led by Shibata and co.Todai guy understood the group’s cause but also worried because Japan lacks facility to contain biohazzard like Ebola and Marburg virus and wanted to make P4 facility near Toyama park.So the dark history and present activities of the institute was full disclosure.
    I think it was also around the time when the group of Chinese family of the victim of Unit 731 sued Japanese government.CNN had live coverage(or could be just the reporter standing with rally of victims) right in front of the Supreme Court.

    I wouldn’t surprise if the government is double binded between the desire of using the momentum to appeal Japan’s effort to face the history and keep it low profile.
    Afterall,it was health minister Kan Naoto who sucked Green Cross Corporation,the medical company that was founded by ex-Unit 731 scientist, right after the HIV-tainted blood scandal.

    One more trivia.Suzuki Shunichi,Tokyo Governer during the bubble years and made the sister city agreement with NYC mayor Edward Koch.And Suzuki,was an officer of Prevention of Epidemics and Water Supply Section in the war years.The OZ article mislead the reader that the entire section is the same with Unit 731,which is not,but somehow the perception is widespread in English speaking world.And because of this,Suzuki got blacklisted and prohibited to enter American territory.My uncle used to be the NY representative of Tokyo Metropolitan Government during Suzuki years and knows the man.told me that Suzuki was shocked.Suzuki died last year at the age of 99.

  11. Hello. I just stumbled across this blog and loved reading the comments from you guys… especially M-Bone. “He was a contemporary of Watson Churchill and Able Hitler” made me laugh.

    I’m always interested in Japanese war crimes and the (lack of a) viewpoint of modern day Japanese. So yeah… thanks for the informative posts. I never knew that the Americans bought the corpses of the atom bomb victims… Jesus. What a terrible world.

  12. “But most Germans or Americans in Vietnam weren’t personally poisoning/killing people. The damn Ishii guy and his pals were hacking human beings to pieces in a daily basis. Personally!”

    Coming up with a hierarchy of atrocity is impossible, but I think that the very necessity of talking about 731 today doesn’t have to do with the hacking so much as how what they were doing was rooted in the way that doctors work in an institutional context.

    Seriously, do we have to worry about average Japanese tying a Chinese peasant to a tree and bayoneting them these days? Nope.

    Do we have to worry about doctors carrying out risky procedures, testing drugs that they may have doubts about, over prescribing to pad their bank accounts, refusing to screen uninsured patients for the same reason – yes. And not just Japanese doctors.

    This abortion doctor case came up in the US just this week –
    http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/01/19/abortion-doctor-facing-murder-chargers-after-killing-7-babies-with-scissors/

    Even more shocking than the 731 atrocities in some ways was the practice of killing the live-born babies of leprosy suffers at Japanese “leper camps” right through the 1950s.

    The medical context, be it for advancement of science or simply for the bottom line, is always hovering between harm and healing and this is why medical ethics and the 731 story are so important.

    When I think about 731 and how people had a choice between career ruin or a career boost if they would perform a vivisection… many of these people had lost patients before and in a battlefield medicine context, doctors were always being called upon to “prioritize” – essentially writing off people who were savable but in the end not worth the effort with other wounded lying there. The very act of opening a body requires some distancing of empathy. 731 is terrible stuff, but in some ways, I think is easier to “understand” than Eichmann and thus more important to study than battlefield horrors. Flawed or not, everyone should give Akuma no Hoshoku a read.

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